


Neverminders

by Jillypups



Series: Tumblr Wedding Prompts [2]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, HNNNGGGHH, Rickeen, Wedding Prompt, loving love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-10
Updated: 2015-09-10
Packaged: 2018-04-20 03:36:12
Rating: Teen And Up AudiencesGeneral Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4771946
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jillypups/pseuds/Jillypups
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tumblr Wedding Prompt #26.<br/>“they said ‘speak now or forever hold your peace’ so i’m speaking up”</p><p> </p><p>  <a href="http://jillypups.tumblr.com/post/128827827893/neverminders-for-frozensnares-tumblr-wedding">Picset</a></p>
            </blockquote>





	Neverminders

It’s late-late on a Friday afternoon here in a jam packed parking lot, surrounding magnolia trees dark and heavy from the springtime heat, blue sky deep and sultry like it’s begging for twilight. Despite the idyllic scene and how much she normally loves weddings, despite the two drive through rush hour traffic, Shireen is anything but thrilled to get out of the car. There is the low sweet sound of instrumental music that swells from inside and spills out onto the asphalt and surrounding green lawn, and though it’s beautiful, all it makes Shireen think is how _unlike_ him it is. But that reminds her why she’s come so far and at such last minute, practically dragged out of her bookstore by the scruff of her neck when her uncle and his boyfriend came for her.

 _You know you can’t sit this one out, Shir,_ Renly told her once Loras had forcibly taken her shop keys and locked up the place after her, once she got into the back of his Mercedes, shaking-hands scared and excited and feeling like she was going to throw up. _You know he can’t go through with this, not without knowing how you feel._

But now that they’ve made it all the way from downtown Nashville to the Franklin suburbs, now that she’s sitting here smoothing down the skirt of her Donna Reed dress and staring down at her scuffed ballet flats, now that she’s out _here_ and he’s in _there_ , oh. Oh, her heart pounds, because she’s not sure she can do it, now.

“This can’t be a good idea, this can’t be a good idea, this can’t be a—”

“Honey, I love you, but please shut up,” Loras says, twisting around from the front passenger seat to look back at her. He’s snapping his gum and grinning, impatient for the shenanigans to start, to be in the getaway car, as he put it about a hundred times while they were stuck on the interstate.

“He is getting _married,_ okay? I mean, you two are engaged, how would you feel if some, some, I don’t know, some busybody ex of Renly’s came barging in to ruin it all?”

Renly laughs and Loras rolls his eyes.

“That wouldn’t happen because I didn’t let The One get away like you two did. There is literally _no one_ who would be so stupid as to think they could come between us.”

“That’s right,” Renly says sagely from the driver’s side.

“Are you guys calling me _stupid_?” she says, hating how her voice squeaks from a curious cocktail of indignation and fear they’re right, of pining love and the pulse-pounding fear that she’s too late.

“We are if you don’t get in there,” Renly says. “Sweetie, listen, if you were up there at the altar in a white dress, even though we know _that_ would be a lie, standing next to someone who is _not_ Rickon,” he says, trailing off. Finally he unbuckles his belt to turn almost fully around his seat, knee knocked against the console, body twisted like he’s in some complex yoga position. “If Ric was still in love with you, wouldn’t you want to know? Wouldn’t you be making a more informed decision on whether or not to say _I Do_?”

She thinks of a wild thicket of auburn hair and eyes so blue they burn, thinks of wicked laughter and the way he made her feel so alive. She thinks of the heartache when his job moved him across the country and she felt obligated to end things, thinks of the shattering relief and subsequent dismay when she learned he moved back, when she found out it was with a fiancée.

“Yeah,” she says breathlessly, her heart so high in her throat the word has barely enough room to escape, and before she realizes exactly what she’s doing, Shireen opens the door and runs across the parking lot, her old shoes a light slap against the pavement, the car door still open behind her, as expectant and hopeful as she is.

 

Rickon stands in front of the altar in a church he’s never gone to, hands clasped loosely in front of him to give off an air of cool confidence. He can’t stop sweating despite the steady gust of air conditioning coming from ducts high above them. He is nervous, and though it’s not a typical feeling he has, anxiety, he supposes most people have that jitter going on just beneath the skin on their wedding day. The view before him is a pleasant enough one, filled on one side with his friends and family and Wylla’s on the other, the many rows of pews all tied up with swags of silk and bunches of lilies that fill the place with their perfume. It’s starting to make him lightheaded; he’s never had much exposure to them since Shir- since _she_ was allergic, so instead of focusing on the scent of the place, he focuses on the music.

He had asked for Dr. Octagon’s “Moosebumps Instrumental” and was instantly shot down even though Wylla likes some out there music, and so he’s standing here listening to some new age Yanni shit her mom picked out, sweating in his rental socks. Resisting the urge to scratch away the jangle of nerves that itches him beneath his collar, resisting the urge to roll his eyes at this incessant flute music, running out of distraction, he glances over to his best man.

He’s standing next to Wex, his best man being one of the only things he’s had a say in since he pushed the ring onto her finger and Wylla turned full carbon copy of her mother. Right on cue Wex slides a sly look his way before looking back to the crowd with a beatific expression on his face.

“Ten bucks says the flower girl cries before making it up here,” Wex whispers, his hair an uncomfortable slick back from the gel one of the bridesmaids insist he wear.

“Ten bucks says Leona stops the priest to tell him how to preach,” Rickon grins, and Wex snorts a laugh that makes Uncle Wendel glare from one of the front pews.

“You know what, ten bucks says _you_ cry before the ink dries on your marriage certificate,” he says with a snicker.

_‘Oh, what, are you gonna cry? Huh? Huh Ric? Why are you hitting yourself, big boy, why are you – Hey, stop it!’ Shireen squealed when he finally had enough of her mouse’s version of rough housing, and Rickon laughed as he easily loosed himself from her grasp, pinning her wrists after flipping her onto her back on the bare tile of her kitchen floor._

_‘The only way you could make me cry is if you ever leave me, woman,’ he told her later with his head on her bare chest, as he listened to her heavy breathing slow down, her fingers deep in his hair as she petted him, stroked him like a woman with a wolf for a pet._

_‘I guess that will never happen, then,’ she sighed happily, squeezing her thighs around his where they were still tangled._

_But then it did._

“Shut the fuck up,” Rickon hisses.

 _It’s your wedding day, stop thinking about the past,_ he scolds himself as the music fades out and the procession begins. He perks up then, because _finally_ he’ll be able to see her, the woman he’s decided to marry; they’ve not seen each other in two days, her mother insisting on a spa retreat before the wedding, insisting on two days of pampering the bride with makeovers and massages. _Come on, Wylla, let me see you, give me_ something _real here that’s just us. A look, a smile, something,_ he thinks as the bridesmaids and flower girl make their way down; at least Wex owes him ten bucks. But when Wylla steps out into view on her father’s arm, when she drifts like a ghost down the long aisle, Rickon can see someone’s convinced her to take the green out of her hair, and she is fake tan and bleach blonde, is smiling at everyone but him. Suddenly he wonders who she is and why he’s here, someone else’s puppet on someone else’s stage, and he wonders how he’s made so many missteps since he moved to Vancouver and left everything – _no, everyone –_ behind.

 

She has sneaked into movie theatres and that one lecture class she shared with Rickon, way back when before they met, all so she could meet the cute boy with messy auburn hair and a winking smile that could knock you on your ass from across the room. But she’s never sneaked into a church before, and _Dammit, it’s a lot harder than it seems,_ because even in her little soft-soled shoes every step echoes like she’s waltzed in here with a twelve piece band and a pair of castanets on her heels.

Shireen has luckily _just_ missed the procession of the bride, and so she sits nervously in the very back pew, closer to those magnolias than she is the altar, keeping her distance for discretion and to avoid the cloying miasma of stargazer lilies. Her hands are nervous fidget, nervous fidget in her lap as she keeps her ears pricked to follow the ceremony, and then there are those words, and she thinks her heart has stopped.

_It stopped a long time ago, though, didn’t it?_

“If any of you here has reasons why these two should not be married, speak now or forever hold your peace,” the priest says in his sleepy scruff of a voice, the sound of a broom on a clean floor. It’s bored and it’s rote, it’s just another line in another ceremony, and because absolutely _nobody_ is expecting it, she almost doesn’t say anything.

“Oh Jesus,” Shireen whispers to herself as she gets to her feet, and then she winces. “Sorry, not you, Jesus, I mean, oh I don’t know,” she whispers, dizzy from the dramatic flair of what she’s about to do.

“I have something to say,” she says, loud as she can when she steps out of the pew and walks down the aisle. “I mean, I have a reason,” she calls out.

It’s a record-scratch of a moment when there is no priest talking and no bride or groom saying vows, when there isn’t even any music in the background as 200 people slowly turn in their seats to look at her. Shireen swallows hard, presses fingertips to her temple because so far Rickon is the last one to look her way. _It’s a horrible mistake, what have I done, I have ruined his wedding._

“What- what- who is this, Ricky, what’s going on right now?”

 _Ricky?_ Before she can help it, Shireen laughs, a loud giddy peal of laughter that rings throughout the entire church, and its then that he looks over his shoulder, turns slowly on his heel so his body can follow the direction of his gaze.

“Shireen?” he says, and _oh, oh, oh,_ she thinks, because there’s a flicker of the old familiarity, there, there’s a hint of that old rascal she fell in love with, there on his mouth where he’s smiling at her despite the horror of this situation.

“Young lady, do you truly intend to interrupt this ceremony?” snaps an older woman in the front pew on the bride’s side. A nervous flicker to the right shows Rickon’s entire family stared wide eyed and agape at her, though Bran and Arya are grinning.

“Mrs. Manderly, please. I am bound to ask this woman to speak her piece,” the priest says, and oh, how that bored sweep of a voice has perked up at this.

“I- Rickon, I’m still in love with you, and I uh, oh. I can’t let you do it, I can’t let you get married until you- I mean, I need you to know that, Ric. Please don’t get- I can’t let you. Oh, fuck,” she says, closing her eyes when a dozen old ladies gasp at her slip up.

“This is a joke, right? Bran, is this you, huh?” says the bleach blonde bride with a snap as she glare at the groom’s side of the aisle.

“I’m not joking,” Shireen says loudly, hands clenched into fists at her sides as if she could squeeze courage from them, and maybe she is. “Rickon, I love you, and I think maybe you love me too,” she says, and then she sneezes, and it echoes as loud as her laughter.

There’s another laugh too, and she realizes with a zing of pin-prickling delight that its Rickon’s.

“Hang on a second, will you?” He says, still chuckling, to the woman by his side before jogging down the altar stairs.

His words make Shireen’s heart fall from her throat like dead weight down into her belly, because even though he is striding towards her, handsome as ever in a well cut tux, he said _A second,_ and that means he intends to return.

“Are you going to escort me out?” she says, tears already springing in her eyes when he pauses in front of her. Her chin trembles and she lifts a hand to hide it, to keep the sob from escaping as she presses it across her mouth.

“You can’t stay here, or else your face is going to blow up like a balloon,” he says.

Rickon takes her lightly by the elbow, as polite as an usher, and he gently pulls her so she turns around, and then they’re walking down the aisle towards the entrance, and she wonders if this is how trash feels when it’s taken out.

“I’m so sorry I came. No, wait,” she says with a shake of her head as he pulls on her elbow so they face each other on the church steps. “Before you kick me out, let me just say, I’m so sorry I ended it with us. I’m so sorry I didn’t go _with_ you. I could have sold the bookstore and just come with you. Everywhere needs a bookstore, even Canada,” she says, and now she’s crying in earnest, ugly in her old dress and ratty flats, standing in front of him in his tailored suit.

“I wouldn’t have let you sell that bookstore, Shir. I shouldn’t have left, that’s all.”

“I’m so sorry I came here, I shouldn’t have listened to- wait, what?” she says, sniffling and looking up at him through the blur of her tears. She blinks hard, several times. “What did you just say?”

“The only thing I’m sorry about is that you didn’t come sooner, because you were right in there. I _am_ still in love with you,” Rickon says, unpinning the lily from his lapel before he tosses it behind him and takes her by the hand. “Now tell me where your ride is so we can get the fuck out of here.”

Together they run to the open car door, Rickon a scoot in first before he yanks her so hard she’s half dragged onto his lap.

“Where to, kids?” Renly says as he starts the engine, as Loras goes _Yes, finally_ with a bump of his fist against the ceiling of the car.

“Anywhere,” they say in unison.


End file.
